Take Two Tablets Exodus 24:12-18

The Ten Commandments are a powerful prescription, designed to teach us right from wrong. But before we can swallow this medicine, we need to join Moses on the mountaintop.

Today is a silver anniversary.

Something significant happened exactly 25 years ago today. Ronald Reagan was president, spearheading then the fight against communism. He told a story about a collective farm in the Soviet Union, one in which a state commissar grabbed a farm worker and said, “Comrade, how are the crops?”

“Oh,” said the farm worker, “Comrade Commissar, if we could put the potatoes in one pile, they would reach the foot of God.”

The commissar corrected him, “This is the Soviet Union, comrade. There is no God.”

“That’s all right,” said the farm worker, “there are no potatoes.”

But that’s a joke — that’s not what happened on February 3, 1983. On that day, Ronald Reagan did something else. He proclaimed 1983 to be “The Year of the Bible.” (For the full text of the proclamation, go to: http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1983/20383b.htm.)